LA Story, part 2

So how did this LA story end? Answer: with a bang and a thud. I mean that literally and you shall find out why.

In brief, or as brief as I can be are my highlights and well, lowlights (thrown in for good measure):

I stayed in WeHo or West Hollywood as the locals called it. I took up residence at Le Montrose Suites, just off Sunset Boulevard. The place itself was what you would expect from a four star joint. It had a worldly era feel and charm (= real estate agent speak for it was old but nice).

The bedroom was spacious with a super comfy bed and the best bit was that there was a walk in wardrobe that adjoined the entrance to the bathroom. I naturally took advantage of this and laid out my growing shoe collection.

The location was great but as I quickly learnt, it was still difficult to walk anywhere in LA since everything was much further away than it looked on the map. I'd recommend it for a short stay. The rooftop pool had a bit of a view even if a lap of the pool could be done in a stroke or two.

So, onto the good stuff. Food and attractions. Here are some of the key ones:

Tenmasa sushi - This unassuming Japanese restaurant was close to the hotel. It was a nice-looking house with a spacious dining room. It was informal and the menu featured all the usual Japanese fare such as 'spicy tuna' which was everywhere there. I ordered that, the salmon and 2 skewers of the chicken yakitori. All of it was delicious. The strangest part about it all was that there are twin brothers who looked like the owners and waiters. I had to a double take sometimes as I had forgotten what I had said what to. Recommended if in the area for a show. Note it's opposite The Roxy and very close to Whisky A Go Go and the Viper Room.

Boxwood Cafe - This was the breakfast and lunch cafe in The London Hotel where Mr Kitchen Nightmare, Gordon Ramsey oversees all the catering for the hotel. I had pretty lofty expections only to be disappointed. Ok, so I am just judging them by their porridge but it was bad porridge. Watery and with no flavour until I doused it in the side of maple syrup and berries. This was my personal kitchen nightmare. Snobby door bitch too. Even Gordon couldn't serve a decent coffee in LA. I continued to drink Starbucks in the meantime.

Farmers Market - This place was awesome. After my disappointment with the Grand Central Market downtown, this place restored my faith in use of the word 'market'. The fact that it was in Beverly Hills and attached to the trendy Grove shopping centre helped too. A range of cuisines was on offer including Cajun, seafood, crepes, pizzas made from scratch, etc. Check out the great stalls:

Talesai Thai - On my last night, I was pretty lazy and didn't want to wander far. I was also having withdrawal symptoms from not having eaten Thai for 2 weeks and if you're a Sydneysider you can relate to this. This place was given some good reviews. The atmosphere was pretty nice, modern and cosy. I had the green chicken curry (yep, it's a universal dish) which was delicious. It was pretty watery so they must have used coconut milk rather than cream but the sliced peppers added some serious heat. 

Urth Cafe - This was my favourite place of probably the entire trip from the perspective of being a place that you could eat at everyday. You can tell from the line up of people, bustling conversation and overly-groomed clientele that this is a place to be and celebrity hang out. In fact, the LP said it was a guaranteed celeb spotting joint. I dined here twice and found it to be like a grungy cum cool cafe in Annandale or Newtown. All the food was organic and brochures strewn on the tables espoused the virtues of this and how much they care about the farmers and where the food comes from. I was like 'yeah yeah, all good, whatever'. However, once the food arrived, I sang a different tune. The porridge with stewed apples and raisins was a revelation. Gordon needs to dine here and taste real porridge. I cannot eat it without sweet, juicy and syrupy apples now.

How was the coffee you ask? Out of this world. They even wrote about it in that damn brochure that I ended up reading in its entirety but the organic coffee was sweet and had so much flavour and aroma. I was in disbelief!

The next morning being my last, I came back here and ordered the poached eggs with salmon parcels filled with baby rocket and topped with lemon creme fraiche and tiny tomato salsa. Did I mention that they have their own pastry chef who also makes all their bread? This was served on crumbly and sweet, toasted brioche with a side of rockmelon. All of it tasted so good that I am converted to the cause of organics more than ever (or where the budget will allow).

Other attractions:

MOCA - The Museum of Contemporary Art has a small outpost near the Pacific Design Centre. The exhibition I saw was crap though and some video art installation that I couldn't run away fast enough from.

Pacific Design Centre - Awesome looking building on the outside but the inside contains nothing but sterile display rooms of posh furniture over about 8 floors. I have no idea how this place survives. There was barely a soul in site that even the security guard looked excited to see me.

Santa Monica beach - This beach was beautiful. There is also a new mall there called Santa Monica place that has a dining deck on the top with views of the beach. It was up there at a place called 'Tutti Fruiti' where I had the most delicious frozen yogurt ever. Ingenius idea. Put together 20 different flavours of soft serve style frozen yogurt, most of it low-fat and then sell it by weight with a range of 20 different toppings all put together by the customer. Wicked! Ate it all!

La Brea tar pits - I promise that I didn't plan to go here. It was an accident. I had walked all the way to LACMA only to find it closed so I innocently stumbled upon this in my vain attempt to find a cab = Fail. Cabs do not roam around LA. In the end I had to get on a stinky bus where I was harassed by a slightly deranged comedian who kept trying to provoke me whilst I ignored him. So the tar pits. Not much to it. They bubbled and for some reason, they have built replica ancient animals to stick in them.

LACMA outside - This was all I got to see. Lesson: don't go there on Wednesdays.

Prada - This was the most awesome shop that I have ever been into in my whole entire life and that's a lot of shops. From street level on Rodeo Drive, there is no door and no sign. A space just opens up and you see a flight of stairs with some mannequins (dressed in Prada) slinking on the steps which are illuminated in their signature green hue. On either side of the steps were bags and towards the back were shoes. Around the back, I realised that the steps also rose from their so that they are sort of pyramid like. I took some sneaky photos inside. The walls were illuminated and puffy. Amazing. It's seductive and gorgeous which is probably how they trick people into paying 4 figures and up for these pink and purple camourflage fashion faux pas':

Amoeba - This was / is the best record store around if you're after a big one that has everything, new and second hand, dvds, blu-rays, books and t-shirts. The Scissor Sisters did an instore here. That's how good it is:

So back to my reference at the start. The bang: I had the most awesome fun ever chasing bargains all around town. My best friends became Nordstrom Rack, Macy's and Barney's where sale racks are a permanent fixture. I left for this trip with 4 pairs of shoes and upon my return, I had 9 in tow.

The thud: I maxed out my credit card and redrew funds from my mortgage.

Would I do it all again? Absolutely and preferably at Prada! Memories are made of this.

LA Story, Part 1

The first leg of my trip began witih 2 days in LA for Ani and Hitesh's big fat wedding and big and fat it was, but I'll get to that.

It all started with my cruisy arrival into LA after a 14.5 hour flight on V Australia's 'new' business class seats. This was followed by my check in at the awesome The Standard Downtown Hotel. After checking out Takami restaurant and the hotel bar that night, I attempted an early night.

I woke up nice and early since I hadn't adjusted to the new time zone. Saturday was going to be a busy day since I had to be at my friends' Ani and Hitesh's wedding by 6pm.

I went to Grand Central Market for breakfast which equalled Grand Disappointment. The Lonely Planet pocket guide wrote about it like a must-see and I expected some gourmet treats. Far from it. This place was like eating in Paddy's Markets with food, worse than what you'd get at a suburban mall. Think cheap and greasy Chinese food, oily American roasted meats and nasty fluorescent Mexican, all of these things cooked unauthentically by weird, shifty looking people. Here's how it looked:

I was starving so I opted for what I thought was a cup of yogurt mixed with bananas, berries and granola. It turned out to be a cup of what tasted like melted ice cream filled with at least 2 chopped bananas at the bottom with a few slices of strawberries and granola only on top. Ok, so it was pretty yummy but ice cream is not the first craving I have in the morning. I didn't finish it obviously!

Next up, it was off to MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art. It was an awesome purpose-built space by some well known architect whose name I've forgotten (how come I only remember what I ate so well but not these important details?). I discovered some awesome new artists that I really liked. Tickets were $10 and entitled you to entry to the other MOCA building downtown near Little Tokyo and a free shuttle bus to it. Check out the awesome exterior of the first building:

I hopped on the shuttle and encouraged the chatty bus driver to take the trip down under which he had been lamenting for some time (this was a common theme!). The Geffen MOCA had an exhibition of art created and curated by screen legend and all round awesome actor, Dennis Hopper. It was interesting but I would not say a 'must see' by any means. He was a painter and photographer before he took acting seriously and there were a number of works on display there. He also met Andy Warhol and was inspired by him to create some pop art works.

After that, I explored Little Tokyo - such a cute name, instead of just 'Japantown'. There were lots of Hello Kitty and KeroKeroKeroppi shops all around. It was also full of Japanese food outlets but I wasn't ready for lunch after that creamy brekky. If I was though, I might have tried this:

Alas, I did not, but instead hopped back on the bus and explored the exterior of the Walt Disney Concert Hall designed by Frank Gehry. I do remember his name because of his association with designing Tiffany jewellery. It was beautiful:

After all that, I headed off to lunch at an American diner that was owned by a former mayor of LA and a real institution, again according to the trusty LP. The menu was elegantly displayed on the wall:

I went for the Pantry Set-up of coleslaw, soup and bread. The soup of the day was beef and vegetables. The mound of coleslaw I received was the largest I'd ever seen. It was the size of a large take away container. It was also surprisingly delicious since it must have soaked in that sweet mayonnaise for a while and taken on those flavours. The 1/4 of a bread loaf was also way generous. The soup itself was surprisingly delicious. The meaty broth was full of flavour and again, a generous portion. Looking around me, I noticed that most people over-ordered since the portions were know to be massive and then all received large white foam take away trays to take leftovers home in. The couple next door to me ordered pancakes, bacon and eggs, French toast, steak, coleslaw and bread!

Then it was time to head back to the hotel and then set off to Pasadena for the big wedding. Pasadena is miles away even though the taxi only took 20 minutes to get there. He was hurtling along at full speed on those freeways. It was nice to see the hills surrounding LA though. The church was lovely and the happy couple were positively glowing! Congrats again guys! It was gorgeous.

The reception was held at the Dream Palace in nearby Glendale. There were copious amount of food served. More than I've ever witnessed at a wedding by about 10 times. Put it this way, Ani told me that there were 22 appetisers or entrees! Yes, TWENTY-TWO! They weren't just ordinary entrees either, there was a big bowl of caviar, cured meats, 3 types of smoked fish and bottles of vodka and J Walker on each table that was constantly being replaced! My new Indian American friends informed me that it was very common in India to invite Mr Walker to weddings.

After the appetizers I was done. I had had enough to feed a small family. Since my table was graced with the presence of the lovely bride and grooms’ mothers, we were given extra Indian food which I did not see on other tables. Think paneer, dahl, samosas and naan bread for a start. Still, we had not come to the main meals yet.


A short while later, 3 enormous platters were placed on our table, each one filled with mixed meats. There was the schnitzel and quail, the rolled baked fish fillets and the roasted beef and roasted pork platters. I had a tiny bit of each for the sake of trying them and the uniquely seasoned and prepared fish was my favourite.

Dessert lived up to the rest of the meal with 3 options being provided. Incredibly light and delicious little cakes that the bride’s dad had painstakingly prepared individually, soaked liqueur sponge and cream cake and fruit. All that food fuelled everyone up for the fusion of Armenian-Indian dancing which took place all night long. It was an awesome night! Thanks again to Ani and Hitesh!

The next morning, I was rudely awaken by my alarm clock. I had a quick breakfast at the Standard’s Restaurant (original name). The gorgeous lemon yellow interior was sunny and at least woke my eyeballs up a little. I only had time for coffee and toast, both of which were average, before the bus came to pick me up for my flight to Chicago. LA had been wonderful to me and downtown was a pleasant surprise after all the surprised comments I received when I told people I was staying there. There was certainly enough to keep me busy and entertained for 1 or 2 nights so I’d recommend it if you’re after a short and fuss free trip for modern art, a funky hotel and some nice food.